What is wrong with our glorious leaders?

What is wrong with our glorious leaders? Recently Martha Raddatz interviewed Boehner (‘This Week’ Transcript: Speaker of the House John Boehner). When Raddatz asked Boehner to comment on a statement made by President Obama about the Federal Budget deficit, Boehner agreed more than he disagreed. Here is an excerpt.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (VIDEO): We’ve already cut– $2.5– $2.7 trillion out of the deficit. If the sequester stays in, you’ve got over $3.5 trillion of deficit reduction already. And, so, we don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next ten years, it’s gonna be in a sustainable place.

MARTHA RADDATZ: Is he right that we don’t have an immediate crisis?

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: We do not have an immediate debt crisis. But we all know that we have one looming. And we have– one looming– because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form. They’re gonna go bankrupt. Washington has responsibility– to our seniors and our near seniors– that we firm up these programs so that they’re there for the long term. Because if we don’t do it, not only will they not get benefits, we will have a debt crisis right around the corner. We have time to solve our problems. But we need to do it now.

MARTHA RADDATZ: H– how long do we have to solve our problems?

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Nobody knows where this is. It could be a year or two years, three years, four years. The– it’s not an immediate problem. But we can all–

MARTHA RADDATZ: So, you agree with the president on that?

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: The Amer– yes. But his point, as he went on to say in that interview, is that we don’t– we don’t really need to do anything at this point. And I would argue that we do need to do something.

Are we suppose to wait until it is too late to cut spending? Just exactly when does a “looming” crisis become a present crisis?

Think about the fact we elected the people who created this “looming” crisis. Think about what it is going take to get our leaders to reduce spending. Instead of decreasing spending, they have increased spending to “solve” what has all along been a spending problem. Why? Our leaders gain influence and power by spending our money, not by being thrifty with our money.

When Does Our Budget Deficit Become A Crisis?

We like to blame our leaders, but what our leaders call a crisis does not matter. We elect them. What matters is whether we think our budget deficit has become a crisis. What matters is whether we think our budget deficit is so large we must finally do something about it.

When we elected leaders who promised to give us other people’s money, we created an economic time bomb. Therefore, when we consider the seriousness of the impending explosion — just how desperate we should be — we need to think about what we need to do about it.

Here is the definition of the term “crisis.”

crisis
n 1: an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty; “they went bankrupt during the economic crisis”
2: a crucial stage or turning point in the course of something; “after the crisis the patient either dies or gets better”

Is our economy unstable — teetering? Look at Europe. Do the nations of the European Union look like they have healthy economies? Yet with reckless disregard for the plain fact that Socialism does not work and has not worked, that’s where our leaders would take us.

Consider again the definition of a “crisis.” The definition only defines the term “crisis:” it says nothing about how to resolve a crisis. Nonetheless, the definition does imply alternatives. We either recover from a crisis or we do not. If our economy crashes, we face the equivalent of national bankruptcy. That’s the sort of impending catastrophe that should inspire us to desperate measures. To avoid severe poverty, shouldn’t we be willing to work hard as we can?

What Sort Of Desperate Measures Does This Crisis Require?

What sort of desperate measures does this crisis require? Strangely, the answer to that question is almost comical. Imagine yourself on Christmas Eve. The children have gone to bed, and you find yourself assembling a complex toy, but it is not going right. Try as you might, you cannot fit the parts together. What would you do? In desperation, you would do what you should have done in the first place. You would read the instructions.

We have been educated by the public school system. Generations of Americans have allowed the politicians who lead us to teach their children. Their instruction includes teaching children about civics. Of course, putting the political establishment in charge of public education produced predictable results. We now graduate too many students who know almost nothing about their civic responsibilities; such graduates have no idea how to control the excesses of their leaders, the politicians who made certain we learned our civic responsibilities. Thus, our leaders can now spend our money recklessly and lie to us almost carelessly.

So what sort of desperate measures do we need to take? We need to read the instruction manuals that explain how our government is suppose to work. When the Founders of our nation created our government, they carefully studied what was required. We need to learn again what the Founders had to learn to design our government and make it work. In particular, we need to learn how to properly operate our government.

Here is a good start: Citizen Tom’s Citizen Library. Please make sure you check out the comments and add suggestions of your own.